Blood Runs Deep
by ladynightsky
Summary: All about the life of Baltor who he was, who he is, and why he’s evil. Also explains just WHAT they mean by today's new Winx episode. I guess AU and OOC not sure yet because the season’s not finished


**Blood Runs Deep**

By: LadyNightSky

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Summary: A one shot about the life of Baltor; who he was, who he is, and why he's evil. I guess AU and OOC; not sure yet because the season's not finished.

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Disclaimer: It'd be cool if I owned Baltor. I could go around changing pretty little pink mermaids into my ugly minions. (_Insert evil laugh here_)

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**A/N: Well, yeah, I got this brainstorm while I was watching the new Winx episode.**

**Some background info- PLEASE READ or you won't understand the setting: **

**In the new episode that aired today, Baltor says that Bloom was born to challenge him, and that they were meant to fight. Bloom has also been having flashbacks whenever someone mentions Baltor's name.**

**Yup, that's about it. Enjoy.**

**Oh yeah, this will probably be a one shot unless something isn't explained fully or you guys want more. Rated T…just because it's a bit dark.**

**REMEMBER TO R&R:)**

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Baltor sat alone in the cave, listening to the water drip steadily from the limestone.

He hadn't been prepared to see her today. What an idiot he'd been, thinking he'd be composed whenever Lady Fate decided to drop her in his path. He'd almost lost control, turning the Princess of Tides blind.

It hadn't been necessary, and would only serve to make Bloom's instinctive hatred of him grow.

Those wide, naive blue eyes had freed so many memories, memories he'd spent seventeen years trying to lock away.

He knew it wasn't fair, what he was doing, making her pay for the sins of her father.

He shouldn't call him Bloom's father.

After all, Oritel had been as much his father as Bloom's; no matter how much he tried to make it not so.

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He still remembered being five and sitting in Oritel's lap, listening to him expound angrily on raising inflation rates and the mirroring decline of businessmen's integrity, his rough peasant's shirt scratching at Baltor's cheek.

Baltor often asked why he, a great king, would wear such ugly clothes, and he would always respond that it was a lesson in humility.

He snorted. _Humility, my ass._

That was where the fond memories stopped. His mother, though never beautiful, had been a kind and gentle woman. For five years she'd ruled Sparx by King Oritel's side.

Then, one gloriously sunny day, it had all changed.

It had been the Day of the Rose, and King Oritel had arranged a parade through the streets of Sparx's capital city. One of his mother's newest ladies, Lady Miriam, had stumbled while strolling behind the Queen, and his father had stopped to help her.

That was the beginning of the end.

Miriam and Oritel had become closer and closer, and his mother had grown gaunter and quieter. Soon, the Queen moved out of Oritel's apartment, and Lady Miriam had moved in. Oritel spent less and less time with him, lavishing all his attention on the young and beautiful Miriam.

On Baltor's sixth birthday, Oritel had made an announcement that changed his life forever.

The King gave a very public speech to his people, declaring that _his mother had died and that Oritel would now remarry…to Miriam._

Oritel had told a blatant lie.

When Baltor heard this, even though he'd been very young, he'd raced to his father and tried to hit him.

Oritel had thrown him off easily and uttered the words that had cemented Baltor's hatred of him forever.

"_Guards, seize him. He is no son of mine."_

The guards had dragged him to his mother's new chambers, whom he hadn't seen since the parade, where she'd greeted him with an icy glare.

Oritel and Miriam's affair had changed her into a cold hearted monster.

Oritel banished the former Queen and her son, whom he declared to the people as a bastard; a child of his mother and another man, unfit to be an heir to the throne, therefore clearing the way for his and Miriam's child to inherit the throne of Sparx.

Baltor and his mother had been forced to the uninhibited, tiny, devoid planet of Tuther, where they lived in a small stone cottage.

Baltor had had to go from a lavish palace and being coddled by ten maids to a puny one-room house where his mother ordered him around imperiously.

He'd been the one to chop firewood in the winter, cook, clean, everything. His mother did nothing but sit in her bed all day and command and scream at him.

She'd told him that it was all _his_ fault that they'd been forced from Sparx, all _his_ fault that they now had barely enough food to survive.

Deep in his heart, he knew what she said was untrue, that the only one at fault was the man he'd once called Father.

As the long months dragged into longer years, that tiny flame of hatred grew and grew, until Baltor became obsessed with the need to destroy Oritel and everything he now held dear.

At night he would sit up and plot his escape from Tuther and Oritel's destruction, preparing to give up his life to make sure of that destruction if need be.

Twice, he tried to escape from Tuther.

Twice he was caught and whipped by Sparx's army.

But the third time, when he was thirteen, he succeeded.

Physically drained, he'd sneaked aboard a cargo ship headed to Suari. There, in it's bustling capital city, he'd staggered to a doorstep and fallen asleep.

When he woke up, he was being presided over by a tall, craggy-faced, silver haired man, who'd proven to be a wizard.

Taking Baltor under his wing, he'd taught him everything he knew, so that Baltor could help him make potions to sell in his apothecary.

When he reached fifteen, Baltor had quietly slipped away from the old man's home, and for two years, he'd pick-pocketed among the rich folk of Suari, spending hours in the great library, teaching himself everything about magic he could find.

He grew more and more powerful, making a name for himself, soon moving back to Sparx at the age of seventeen.

He learned that the King and Miriam had just had another baby girl, Princess Bloom, sister to Daphne, current heir to the throne.

Anger had blinded him once again. That girl had everything he was supposed to have. He knew that every month, on the Day of the Rose, the King would have a parade.

On that day, he'd stood among the crowd of party goers, hand clenched around a bewitched dagger.

As the royal party passed, he'd swept forward in a second, letting his dagger plunge into the heart of Princess Daphne.

Before anyone could scream, he was gone.

For the next few weeks, pandemonium had reigned on Sparx, rumors of the true murderer flying wild while Baltor quietly moved once again.

He had gone back to Suari, where one night, a year after the murder, he met three witches in a little black shop in a place where no light would ever touch.

He had sensed a kinship with the witches, and they plotted together to take over the Magical Dimension.

In his mind, Baltor had been plotting on how to use them to his best advantage.

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_The rest was history_, Baltor thought, still staring at the walls of the limestone cave.

The witches, on his suggestion, had started their let's-take-over-the-dimension scheme on Sparx.

When they were caught, however, they immediately blamed everything on Baltor.

He'd been shipped to the Omega Dimension, and there he'd stayed for the last seventeen years, free to ponder the letter that had been handed to him before he'd been dropped and frozen.

The letter from Oritel that had said that he'd always watched Baltor through magic crystals. And that he knew one thing that Baltor had never learned. And that someday, a girl named Bloom would destroy him as he'd destroyed Sparx.

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**A/N: Whew. So how do you like it? I realize it's a bit cryptic, but please R&R anyways :).**

**I was listening to Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance as I was writing this; oh the irony.**

**Anyways….again, R&R PLEASE!!!**


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